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Awareness

I learned to be more sensitive to what was happening around me, to notice what was hot and what was not, to be aware of what worked and what didn't work. In order to run their own business, all of our entrepreneurial salespeople must have that level of awareness.

—Bruce Nordstrom

Awareness is the state or condition of having knowledge and consciousness—two qualities that are essential to creating a memorable service experience.

In his 1950 memoir, founder John W. Nordstrom recalled the very first day of business for his little shoe store, which he opened in 1901 in downtown Seattle with Carl F. Wallin, whom John W. knew from their days in the Klondike during the Alaska Gold Rush. Wallin's previous business experience had been the running of a 10‐foot‐wide shoe repair shop in downtown Seattle. John W. wrote:

I had never fitted a pair of shoes or sold anything in my life, but I was depending on Mr. Wallin's meager knowledge of shoe salesmanship to help me out. Well, this opening day we had not had a customer by noon, so my partner went to lunch. He had not been gone but a few minutes when our first customer, a woman, came in for a pair of shoes she had seen in the window. I was nervous and could not find the style she had picked out in our stock. I was just about ready to give up when I decided to [let her] try on the pair from the window, the only pair we had of ...

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